What Kind of Accent is That?
The tall Viking with the lint-white hair stood at the open French windows ‘Um upsala gows tob veeld ummummlubbunum,' he said politely. Geoff and I looked at each other in terror. ‘Eem gows oop labbunum,' he repeated patiently using hand signals as if communicating with under-educated aliens. It transpired that the Viking was assisting his grandfather to move his cows into the field behind the house and could he please trim the overhanging laburnam which, of course, meant death to cows. Simple.
For six months we are living in a four-hundred-year-old farmhouse in a remote valley on the edge of the Peak District National Park in Yorkshire. (The Norsemen had been early settlers in the area and the Scandinavian influence is evident in faces and names). We have swapped jobs, houses and cars with a couple from the University of Huddersfield. It's fascinating to live in another woman's house with all their possessions still in it. Many of the authors on the bookshelves are duplicated at home. The music on the piano is identical to mine. But the kitchen is ill-equipped and there are no vases or wineglasses. ‘What kind of people don't have vases or wineglasses!' I muttered to myself as I searched the cupboards and then realised with a jolt that they would be simultaneously rummaging through my cupboards in Australia, aghast at the number of vases and wineglasses and probably saying, ‘All she must DO all day is arrange flowers and drink wine!'
The natives are very friendly and enormously patient with us ‘coomers'. Anyone not born in The Valley is a ‘coomer'. Sylvia-Down-Lane at the next farm was not accepted by her future mother-in-law 37 years ago as she was a ‘towney', having been born six miles away in Sheffield . Sylvia-Down-Lane says Dean Croft is for sale at Trenholmlee and suggests we may care to buy it and live here permanently.
Despite the fact that her husband Clem ‘disbelieves' in ‘they computers', I have started typing up his memoirs as it would be a pity if such living oral history of the valley is lost and he ‘disremembers' everything. The morning after Chernobyl Clem assures me he could smell it on the wind. He always knows when there is a Big Push on somewhere (ie the Gulf War) because a plane flies down the valley. He once left the valley and visited Croydon outside London, but he didn't think it was as nice as here so he never travelled again.
He could have a point, as we're forever getting lost on the spectacular moors behind the house. Not much sense in asking directions anyway – we have such difficulties in understanding the ensuing instructions. There are road signs, but they're all turned the wrong way. Consequently, we never actually went to Wightwhizzle as planned but have been to aptly named and aromatic Dungworth three times instead. Whether it is the wind that revolves the road signs or the locals still trying to mislead German paratroopers, we're not sure. We suspish the latter.
We had been handfeeding and chatting happily each day to one of the horses in the field below the house called Puppy. ‘What a curious name, why did you call her that?' I asked her young owners. 'Oh , because we saw lots of them on the way home from buying her.' Ten weeks down the track we have found out the foal's name is Poppy, not Puppy.
It's getting very ‘drear' with winter closing in and the leaves in the surrounding woods are beginning to turn. Silver squirrels straight of Beatrix Potter skip through the garden harvesting nuts. A family of pheasant shelters under the blackberries or ‘brambles' as they are known here. But we're very snug inside, out of the ‘mizzle'. Methinks we will be very grateful for the three foot thick stone walls and ox-roasting fireplaces in a month or so. Sylvia tells us that the snow can be as high as the drystone walls lining the lane. We seem to have graduated with Distinction in Boiler Skills, with G's daily riddling and stoking keeping the hot water flowing. We have to ‘do' boiler even in summer and it was hilarious to see him going across yard to coal hole one morning soon after we arrived, in shortie pyjamas, gum boots and carrying two scuttles of coal. We are not on ‘town water' but have a spring in the field below the house. With the shortage of water in Yorkshire at the present we are probably better off than most. ‘Nowt' to worry about in fact. Yorkshire Joke: ‘How do you discover if there really is a Loch Ness Monster? Sell Loch Ness to Yorkshire Water and they'll drain it in no time.'
‘Nowt' is a good word. There's a local saying ‘Cast nowt a clout til May is out.' Meaning don't dare take your vest off till Summer! I was quite taken with ‘she really naffs me off' which I overheard on the bus to Sheffiled and was using it quite a lot until someone had a quiet word with me not to use it in Polite Company.
‘And what kind of accent is that?' asked the Fishmonger at the Sheffield Market last week. ‘ I haven't got an accent!' I replied hotly, ‘I'm Australian – and YOU'RE the one with the accent.' ‘Well, g'day Mite,' he said as both laughed and fell all over the plaice and haddock.